Nicholas Agafonikov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Agafonikov was an archpriest and dean of Podolsk and was shot at Butovo, near Moscow, on 5 November 1937.

Childhood and ministry

He was born on 1 September 1876, into a hereditary clerical family, in the village of Lekma in the Vyatka province, to the deacon Vladimir Yakovlevich Agafonikov and Maria Andreevna. In their house peace reigned. His mother, a person of rare kindness and deep faith, taught him sincere prayer from an early age. From the age of six he sang with her in the choir, from seven he read the hours and the Psalms, and as sacristan he amazed the parishioners with his seriousness. In 1887 he entered the theological school at Vyatka, and in 1898 the seminary, being at the same time a reader at the Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Slobodskoi. At twenty-⁠three he married Nina Vasilievna Fedorova and, in 1899, Bishop Alexis of Vyatka ordained him priest. His first parish was the village of Zagorye, where he served seventeen years as a beloved shepherd, teaching the people to live by the commandments of Christ, helping them with advice and money and buying medicine for the sick. With ten persons in his family, he had no riches to hide, though the men of the new authority supposed otherwise and searched his home under the pretext of helping the hungry.

Arrests and death

In February 1923 he was arrested at Vyatka on suspicion of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and taken to the Lubyanka in Moscow; in July he was released for lack of proof. He did not abandon the cross of the priesthood, did not renounce his rank and did not join the Renovationist schism. Moved in 1927 near his grown children, in the Podolsk district, he served first at Vorsino, then from 1930 he was rector of the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Yerino and dean of Podolsk, loved for his sympathy, spiritual firmness and courage.

In October-⁠November 1937 mass arrests of the "anti-⁠Soviet element" began in Podolsk. Among those targeted was the dean, who had great authority among priests and parishioners. People who had enjoyed his hospitality gave testimony against him, while he spoke ill of no one; asked with whom he had contact among the clergy, he answered that only in the line of duty, as dean. He did not admit guilt. On 3 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 5 November the sentence was carried out at the Butovo range. He was rehabilitated on 21 February 1994.

He is remembered on 23 October (5 November in the new style), the day of his martyrdom, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors (on the nearest Sunday), on 21 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vyatka, on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.